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Friday Summary 10-17-08

Rich is off to see Jimmy Buffet in southern California and get some R&R, so I have blog duties this week. It’s briefing season in the analyst community. I probably should not be surprised given we typically launched our PR tours with my previous employers this time of year, but even Rich has been a little surprised with the volume of discussions. We have been in full swing with a packed calendar during the last couple of weeks and it shows no sign of letting up through November. If I am a little slow returning your email in the morning that is why. And I got to admit it is more interesting being on the receiving end of the equation that delivering the same information 100 times. The breadth of technologies and companies is very exciting, for me at least, and as a result I am digging deep into a number of technologies I have not had a chance to play with while working for a vendor. I have been seeing a lot of solid advancements from several companies, so that makes the calls interesting as well. I have to further comment on the comments last week that the OS X Server Wiki/Blog software we switched to internally has been great for us. For a small team like us the ability to collaborate and keep information centrally has been an great convenience as we can work independently yet still catch up on what the other is doing by scanning the internal blog and wiki. Easy to use and still more functions than we really need at this point. Highly recommended! The Drobo Rich ordered looks very, very cool … yes, I am jealous. Given the number of photos I have been taking I think I am going to order one as well. Going to hook it up between the iMacs via Firewire. I will keep you posted. On a personal note I was watching IronMan last night on DVD. Great movie. But how many of you saw the movie trailer with Samuel L Jackson at the end? No? Surprised the heck out of me that after the credits have finished, there is a little teaser was where no one … practically no one, would see it. Pretty cool! Oh, and Rich may have seen two coyotes in the park near his house, but I have discovered a ‘family’ of Tarantula’s living on my back porch. We were having drinks on the patio when this 7 inch fuzzy spider cruises by us a few nights ago. Last night a couple smaller ones were climbing the wall about 10 feet off the ground as if gravity simply did not apply to them. They are fascinating to watch. Webcasts, Podcasts, and Conferences: Nada this week for me. Favorite Securosis Posts: Rich: Your WPA-PSK Wireless Network is at Risk … If You Are An Idiot. Processing capacity is cheap and plentiful, and this is a new use for idle resources, but nothing more. Weak passwords are weak passwords. Adrian: Real life three stooges star in ‘Credit Card Craziness’. Favorite Outside Posts: Adrian: Over on the Network Security Blog, Martin has an excellent post on a topic that should get far more attention than it does: Why Is Your Company Storing Credit Card Numbers? Rich: Hoff continues to be ahead of the curve on developments in the Virtualization Security space, as well as coverage on the VMWare acquisition of BlueLane. VMWare may not have hired the Hoff, but they seem to be taking his advice. Top News: The Obama-McCain debate was Wednesday night. High definition television was not kind to John McCain. Stocks continue to fluctuate, with a nice early week rally as many investors ‘double-down’ on the firms they have confidence in. Oracle released their big fall patch update. BEA users take note! Did you hear? We are at risk of entering a recession! Really, I could not make this stuff up! Blog Comment of the Week: Jim Hietala’s comment on My “Will Database Security Vendors Disappear” post: I don’t know that database security market all that well, but it strikes me that all of the points you made can be applied to every individual security segment, including NAC, endpoint security, DLP, e-mail security, and on and on. Certainly the trust one applies to all, breadth of function in most cases applies, and too many choices I think does as well. Doesn”t bode well for the health of the security start-up market in the next couple of years   No Securosis company meeting this week, so I am off for a little recon work. More on this later. Share:

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